The Broader Implications of the Court’s Healthcare Decision

Guest post by Professor Jedediah PurdyAnyone who cares about fairness and good sense in social policy should count Thursday’s decision a victory – as most progressives are doing.At the same time, we should be clear on this: The Supreme Court, on its own previously announced principles, had no business coming so close to invalidating the ACA. Justice Roberts saved the constitutionality of a humane and centrist piece of social legislation.  Gutting it would have been radical, and it is striking that four justices would have done so.  Roberts also confirmed the view of the Constitution...

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Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare, Narrows Medicaid Provision, and Begins the Dismantling of the New Deal State

The Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision on the Affordable Care Act this morning, upholding the individual mandate and the remainder of the Act by a slim 5-4 majority, comprised of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.The only partial defeat for the government was the Court’s holding that the Medicaid provision – which conditioned federal funds on states’ acceptance of expanded Medicaid coverage – must be interpreted narrowly such that states that refuse to expand their Medicaid programs lose federal funding only for the expansion, but not for the...

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Supreme Court Bars Mandatory Life Sentences for Juveniles

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday in the case of Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles convicted of homicide are unconstitutional. At the heart of the Court’s opinion is the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, forbidding “cruel and unusual punishment.” Significantly, the Court held that states may not require judges to institute life sentences without the possibility of parole, but did not institute a flat ban on such sentences, even though the ramblings of the dissenting justices would suggest otherwise.The defendants in these...

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Corporate Court Starts Filling Its Docket for Next Term

The Supreme Court’s 2011-12 term, which will end this week with a hotly anticipated ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, has been dubbed the “term of the century” by some legal observers. But at the same time that the Court is issuing landmark rulings on topics from juvenile justice to immigration enforcement to health care reform, the Court is also deciding which cases it will hear next term — accepting a number of cases with tremendous implications for corporate accountability. The Court’s grants of certiorari in these cases are a worrying sign that the Court is prepared...

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Federal Immigration Authority Affirmed

Guest post by Professor Angela BanksThe Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Arizona affirms the federal government’s supremacy to regulate immigration.  Yet the Court’s opinion left two key legal issues to be decided by lower courts.  First, whether states have the independent authority to detain individuals for immigration crimes and second, whether racial profiling is used to identify unauthorized migrants and whether such profiling is unconstitutional.  Debates about the substance of immigration regulation and what the country’s immigration enforcement priorities should...

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Court Refuses to Rehear Campaign Finance Arguments

In a narrow 5-4 decision today the United States Supreme Court strengthened its 2010 holding in Citizens United v. FEC by overturning a century-old Montana state law that bans campaign contributions from corporations due to their corrupting influence on the electoral process. By declining to hear arguments on American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock and summarily reversing the decision of the Montana Supreme Court to uphold the state's Corrupt Practices Act, the Court signaled the futility of challenging its Citizens United ruling that the political speech of corporations is protected...

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Scalia Uses Dissent to Deliver Policy and Political Lecture from the Bench

If you think that the Supreme Court is supposed to leave policy and political concerns to the policy-makers and politicians, then your name probably isn’t Antonin Scalia.In a blistering dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision rejecting much of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, Scalia spends an inordinate amount of time railing against President Obama’s enforcement policies and Congress’ budget, legislative, and appropriation decisions, as well as the politics of immigration enforcement and reform. Scalia not only characterizes current federal polices as “questionable” or “unwise,” he...

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Supreme Court Ruling Hampers Unions’ Political Speech

Guest post by Professor Benjamin SachsUntil yesterday, it was voters and legislators who got to decide whether they wanted to live in a right-to-work state.  With Knox v. SEIU, the Supreme Court began to assume that decision-making responsibility for the rest of us.  At least when it comes to the public sector, Knox takes a giant step in the direction of holding that any rule requiring employees to pay their fair share of the collective bargaining bill is unconstitutional.  That’s a dramatic departure from prior precedent.  It’s a striking example of judicial activism. ...

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The Wal-Mart Decision: One Year Later

- by Greta Foster On Wednesday, June 20th about fifty people gathered in front of the United States Supreme Court to speak out against the Court's 2011 decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, which drastically changed the process by which employees could group together to challenge employment discrimination. The crowd, organized and coordinated by the American Association of University Women, was joined by many organizations including NOW, Alliance for Justice, and National Partnerships for Women and Families. People a block away could hear chants of, “What do we need? FAIR PAY! When do we need it? NOW!”Betty...

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Corporate Court Sides with Big Pharma in Overtime Pay Case

The Supreme Court gives another exampleof how real life isn't like the movies.In the 2010 romantic comedy Love and Other Drugs, Jamie Randall was a pharmaceutical representative who ensured that the products of his employer, Pfizer, were prescribed more often than its competitors’. He worked hard and, thanks to Pfizer’s revolutionary new treatment for erectile dysfunction, succeeded in replacing many pharmaceutical products with their Pfizer equivalents.Those who have seen the movie will remember Jamie’s great success upon Viagra’s entry into the market. They might also remember that Jamie was...

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Government sides with oil companies accused of human rights atrocities

In a pending Supreme Court case involving human rights abuses allegedly committed overseas by British and Dutch oil companies, the Obama administration came out last week on the side of corporate interests. This past Wednesday, the Department of Justice filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, arguing that U.S. courts:should not create a cause of action that challenges the actions of a foreign sovereign in its own territory, where the [defendant] is a foreign corporation of a third country that allegedly aided and abetted the foreign sovereign’s conduct.The Supreme...

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Experts draw lessons from the Roberts Court's biggest cases

Yesterday, AFJ presented a panel at the 2012 Take Back the American Dream Conference in Washington, DC. Our panel discussed the growing politicization of the Roberts Court and past and future decisions that will impact almost every major political issue of our time.Judy Scott speaks at our panel on the Supreme CourtProfessor Jeffrey Rosen of GW Law and The New Republic stressed that the forthcoming decision in the case challenging health care reform will be a “moment of truth” for Chief Justice Roberts, saying “…to strike down healthcare reform by a 5-4 vote would represent an irredeemable failure...

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Rick Scott Not Dead, Voter Fraud Not a Threat

Justice Anthony Kennedy last week stayed a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that new electoral registration requirements in Arizona are prohibited under federal law. Voters in Arizona, a laboratory for anti-immigrant policies, passed Proposition 200 in 2004, requiring voters to offer proof of citizenship. Opponents immediately identified the proposal as anti-immigrant and a threat to Latino civil rights.On Wednesday, supporters of Proposition 200 asked Justice Kennedy to stop the Ninth Circuit ruling from coming into effect, at least until the end of this election year (Justice Kennedy is...

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Watch online: Our all-star panel looks at upcoming Supreme Court cases

var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-2327420-4']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); Last Friday, Alliance for Justice presented a panel discussion at the annual Netroots Nation...

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One Year Later: The Consequences of Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett

A year ago, during oral arguments in Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court were candidly skeptical of the “matching funds” provision in Arizona’s campaign finance law that Freedom Club PAC was challenging. That provision allowed a publicly-funded candidate in Arizona to match and spend the same dollar amount as a privately-funded opponent up to a certain limit. Justice Antonin Scalia, for example, feared that a wealthy donor might refuse to contribute $10 million to a campaign if a publicly financed opponent would then receive...

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Revisiting the Thurmond Rule

Is Strom Thurmond still castinga shadow over Senate procedure?His obstructionist maneuvers from 1968have become part of Senate folk wisdom.Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that Senate Republicans are invoking the “Thurmond rule” to halt the confirmation of any more circuit court judges this year. Should Senator Reid (D-NV) try to schedule a vote on an appellate court judge, the GOP members of the Senate will filibuster the confirmation and deny the nominee a chance to receive an up or down vote. This means that the 4 circuit court nominees who have been waiting...

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AFJ at Take Back the American Dream

We’re headed to the annual Take Back the American Dream conference in Washington, DC next week!Make sure to stop by our exhibit booth, and join us for our panel, “Judicial Wilding: Progressives and the Supreme Court” on Monday, June 18 at 12:15 p.m. Since the healthcare arguments in March, the overtly political nature of the Roberts Court has become a topic of great debate, and this Court is poised to take on almost every single major political issue dividing this country. What does this overt politicization mean for the legitimacy of the Court? What can activists do to help insure the future...

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One Year Later: The Consequences of Janus Capital v. First Derivative Traders

In Janus Capital Group, Inc. v. First Derivative Traders, Inc., a case decided one year ago this month, the Supreme Court hampered the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in its efforts to combat fraud, by deciding that white-collar criminals could devise complex structures of shell corporations to avoid accountability. The decision – part of a growing trend of corporation-friendly 5-4 rulings engineered by the conservative wing of the Court – was ostensibly intended to create a bright-line rule that would clarify the application of important corporate accountability regulations, but has...

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Court rubberstamps indefinite imprisonment in Guantanamo and the use of torture against an American citizen

The Supreme Court today declined to hear arguments on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees seeking release under the habeas corpus doctrine, and on behalf of an American citizen seeking nominal damages for torture he suffered at the hands of the U.S. government. The Court’s denial of cert means that the U.S. government can indefinitely hold detainees even when there have been no formal charges brought against them.Another of today’s cert denials impedes an American citizen from bringing suit against high-profile Pentagon officials for authorizing years of torture committed on American soil.Four...

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DOMA and Prop 8 Cases Inch Toward the Supreme Court

Over the past decade, movement on marriage equality has been in two opposing directions, with some states passing laws to allow same-sex marriage and others passing laws to prohibit such unions. In addition to the legislative strategy, some advocates have pursued a litigation strategy, which has paid increasing dividends as several federal courts have recently ruled that efforts to deny same-sex couples the right to marry are unconstitutional. In February, the Ninth Circuit struck down California’s Prop 8 (the voter-enacted ban on same-sex marriage) and just a few days ago declined to rehear...

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